iii

Napoleon the III has finally succeeded to my fish tank! You might remember the tragic demise of Napoleon II and Napoleon I. You may also remember that I've been hoping for a puffer fish. I finally got one! Meet Napoleon III, the dwarf puffer fish! He's so cute (in an ugly way)! And so little. My two remaining fish, Inkie (the black angelfish) and Barnaby (the diamond tetra), are both much bigger than he is. But he'll grow!

For a while I thought I was destined just to hope for a puffer fish but never get one. I guess puffers are more complicated than I really want to deal with. Many of them are brackish species. The juveniles are quite happy in freshwater, but they need some salts as they age. I definitely had no plans to deal with that! They also tend to be very aggressive fish. I've had my share of bully fish, and I don't really want any more. (You won't catch me with betas!) So those two considerations kept me away from the more common varieties of puffers: the spotted and the figure 8. A year ago, when I was most fired up to research them and search for them, I discovered that dwarf puffers are friendlier and also completely freshwater. Of course, they seemed to be a new fish to the aquarist trade, and couldn't yet be found in Woodland or Davis. They still couldn't be come by last summer when I added Inkie to the mix.

Yesterday Jenny and Geetha came up to Davis for dindin. To keep them entertained, since there really isn't anything to do here, we went to the fish store to look for a new Napoleon. And they had dwarf puffer fish! Yayayayay! Jenny didn't like that I brought her fish shopping to pick out a new Napoleon and then ignored all her suggestions (she liked the rainbow sharks and an oscar). I'm sorry! I've just had this unrequited puffer fish thing going on for so long! (The oscar really was cool. He was my second choice, but I worried about him being a little too big for my aquarium.)

So let's all warmly welcome Napoleon III, but also impart these words of warning: "Stay away from the tongue!"